5 Game Situations That Would Actually Suck (LIST)

The thing that makes video gaming a several-billion-dollar industry is the ability to experience something you’d never get to do in real life, on account of the fact that you’re sitting on the couch, playing a video game, rather than out training to be an astronaut or something.

The games that sell that best generally have one thing: a high “badassery” quotient.

Yes, we all want to play as the gun-slinging, enemy mangling, ninja-assassination-ing BAMF of our deepest imaginations. And games are happy to oblige with magic, superpowers, armor supersuits, injected mental powers, spy training, amazing gadgets, and an incredible amount of “holy crap I can’t believe that didn’t kill me” luck.

But some of those things that seem so great in the virtual world — bastions of badassery — would actually suck to experience. And we’re not talking a little suck, we’re talking life-altering, go-to-the-nearest-spaceship-airlock-and-blow-yourself-out-into-the-inky-void suck.

The following are several video game situations that seem like they’d be great to actually experience. We’re taking a harder look at them to expose the slimy mollusk beneath the awesome shiny seashell of supposedly “cool” video game concepts.

5. Collecting Coins

The Scenario: As you journey onward to save the distressed princess from the giant dragon-turtle, you’re constantly stumbling on somebody’s loose change. It’s freaking everywhere. You keep stuffing it in your pockets, and you keep finding more! Sometimes, you even get a 1-up if you find enough. Suddenly this pro-bono random princess-saving mission is a paid gig.

The Reality: You find a coin. That’s awesome. Stick it in your pocket.

Then you find another one. Pocket. And another one. Pocket. You jump in some kind of weird green pipe and you’re in a room full of coins. Pocket. Pocket. Pocket. Pocket.

Hope you brought cargo pants.

Even if we’re generous and assume that when you hit 100 coins, they turn into an extra life (still — where are you gonna stick that mushroom?), you still have to lug around the first 99 until that happens. Your pants are gonna be heavy, your running is impeded by your sloshing but solid pockets, and every step you take is announced to the entire world with an incessant, maddening jingle jingle jingle.

And in the end, for all that effort you collected, what, like $10 probably? Bus fare back from the Mushroom Kingdom?

4. Leveling Up by Massacring Cute Forest Animals

The Scenario: As a precocious young warrior, you venture into the forests surrounding your home city with just your sword and your wits, hoping to hone your skills in defense against various hostile indigenous creatures.

Yes, it’s a romantic notion to go out into the forest and fight off vicious monsters, goblins, squirrels, sheep — whatever. As Samuel L. Jackson once said, they deserved to die and you hope the burn in hell, right? Okay, maybe goblins. But the rest of those animals out in the forest, falling to your blade in the name of experience points, are just animals doing animal things. And not to be a World of Warcraft PETA activist or anything, but how many squirrels have to die so you can level up and take on a dragon or something?

In reality, you and every other warrior wanting to go learn how to use a sword, stumbling around the forest, are an ecosystem-destroying bulldozer far beyond anything demonized in the movie “Fern Gully.” Think American buffalo in the mid-1800s. It wouldn’t be long before you’d scoured every forest, cave and valley of all life.

Thanks for the environmental holocaust, Good Guys. I’m sure it was worth it to defeat that single evil wizard.

3. Stealth Spying

The Situation: When the U.S. really needs really important intelligence, it doesn’t send a bunch of grunt soldiers — it sends you, a lone operative, to infiltrate enemy strongholds, assassinate leaders, defuse nuclear weapons. You’re a ghost, a ninja and a legend, and all enemies fall before your might and intelligence.

The Reality: Solid Snake and Sam Fisher spend a lot of time in crappy places. Like inside boxes. Or vents. Or under cars. Hanging from ceilings. Concealed in lockers. Perched in shadows.

One has to figure they get a lot of cramps, and their feet probably fall asleep a lot.

Being stealthy is cool when you’re doing the neck-snapping. What about the waiting several hours for night to fall? Or the crawling through raw sewage pipes to reach sensitive areas? Or when your partner has to use you to climb up to a window?

At the very least, Fisher and Snake spend entire missions hunched over, trying to look small and avoid being seen or taking fire. Just take a look at their posture. That can’t be comfortable. The chiropractic bills alone would suck up all your hero pay for stopping any nuclear threats.

2. Shooting Up Plasmids

The Situation: In the dark and dripping halls of an underwater city, you inject a syringe into your wrist and suddenly, you’ve realigned your DNA. Lightning crackles across your palm – just in time to fight off the two frightening crazies approaching you from the shadows, and those creeps happen to be standing in a puddle. You will electricity to burst from your hand and fry both of them and you grin at the exercise of the superhuman abilities you got out of a glass needle.

The Reality: Fist full of lightning — yeah, that’s pretty awesome. It doesn’t matter that the actual applications of being able to project electricity from your hands are pretty limited, because no matter what, you have the best party trick ever. You’re a living Tesla coil. You will never be mugged or even sneered at again.

And while there are a wealth of cool and weird powers (one that grows bees in your forearms, which you can then send in a maddening cloud at your enemies [freakin' bees!]), there’s one thing that comes up but is a little bit glossed-over in this whole scenario. That’s the point that those weird crazies who keep attacking you without provocation used to be just like you, and before that, they were even more normal.

Yes, overuse (or maybe just “use”) of Plasmids has the very serious side-effect of driving its users absolutely insane. Like cutting up your own face Reaver insane.

The possibility of total ludicrous, murderous insanity would be a calculated risk in some cases, but then again…how important is your ability to produce and control a bee swarm? Yeah, that’s cool in the one fighting-for-your-life situation (I guess, but as has been pointed out: Who gets killed by bees?), but it’s not like you need pyrokinesis every day. Modern humanity has discovered matches. Thanks, we’ll let you know if we need you.

In all, that’s a relatively small amount of barely useful power that will probably cost you your sanity. The badass quotient drops off severely when you’re introducing invisible people to your favorite bees, Professor Moriarty, Alexander Hamilton and Jimmy.

1. Being Master Chief

The Situation: You’re the greatest soldier in the universe — genetically enhanced, trained in superior tactics, capable of piloting any vehicle, and fully versed in all manner of the disbursal and application of death. Single-handedly turning the tides of battles and rampaging across the universe, you jump higher, run faster, wear a Star Trek deflector shield on your person and are generally unkillable. The ultimate of ultimate badasses.

The Reality: You might get to drop into the Chief’s world when you turn on your Xbox and bounce out when it’s off, but to live this man’s life, it’s not nearly as cool as you might think.

Let’s start with his childhood. Oh right — Master Chief didn’t get to have one. Why’s that? Because the military sent Office of Naval Intelligence agents to kidnap him. They replaced him with a clone. So when you’re Master Chief, you really cannot go home again, because your parents won’t believe you’re you. You don’t even have any parents.

You’ve also been training to be this badass super soldier for your entire life. You didn’t go to school. You didn’t go to prom. You didn’t go on a date. You haven’t had a drink. There was no football team or drama club to try out for. Imagine being a teenager in the SPARTAN-II — I think it’s fair to say your emo phase would have ended real fast. At the butt of a gun to the face, probably.

I couldn’t find it written down anywhere, but let’s be real: they probably sew you into that armor. Master Chief wears it for about two years straight. He attends an awards ceremony with it on when nothing scary is happening. He repeatedly goes into and comes out of cryosleep while wearing it. There’s certainly no way to take it off to pee, which means he pees in there and the suit is powered by it or recycles it or something.

One last thing: SPARTANS aren’t always sent out to fight the Covenant. As we see in Halo: Reach, sometimes they get to go break up resistance movements or check on broken communications arrays. I’m sure you’ll have a good time showing up to strong-arm civilians in trade disputes and put down idiots stockpiling weapons.

But almost always, if there’s a mission in which there’s a high likelihood of getting your ass blown off, guess who gets to go? Oh, right — the “badass” in the pee armor.

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9 Comments on 5 Game Situations That Would Actually Suck (LIST)

thisarticlesucks

On October 9, 2010 at 9:41 am

If you guys were trying to be funny, it failed.
If you guys were trying to be insightful, it also failed.
This article is just pretty lame…

Tom

On October 9, 2010 at 10:48 am

I think this article is pretty cool
It was worthy of my 3 minutes

Miss Pip

On October 9, 2010 at 7:14 pm

I would really love to see a play starring Master Chief. I believe he has some raw thespian talent underneath that visor.

Jerry Jackson

On October 10, 2010 at 12:37 am

hilarious!

Jackie

On October 10, 2010 at 12:15 pm

This is freaking hilarious, I love the mario collecting coins one. too cute

Hate to burst your bubble, but the events from the end of reach to the end of halo 3 are like… 3 months, IF THAT.

Me

On October 25, 2010 at 12:05 pm

Master Cheif wasn’t replaced by a clone as a child, nor is his Armour permanently attached. His name is John, and the program to make him a spartan was pretty brutal. His skeleton is reinforced with synthetics making him able to wear his armor. Some of his fellow Spartans died during the process. Read the books, they’re pretty good.

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